


I'd Stay If I Could

by uaigneach



Series: It's 2021 and I'm sad [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Cheating, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Neurodivergent Character, M/M, Sad Kuroo Tetsurou, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28836522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaigneach/pseuds/uaigneach
Summary: Tetsurou was a man of science. He couldn’t just jump to conclusions and accuse someone of not loving him. He didn’t even know for sure if this was even a serious enough case to warrant action one way or the other. He’d just… pay attention to what happened around him and see how the petals developed.Hell, the petals weren’t even large enough for him to see what kind they were.He just needed… time.
Relationships: Bokuto & Kuroo & Oikawa & Sawamura & Terushima & Ushijima, Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma, Kozume Kenma & Kuroo Tetsurou, Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou
Series: It's 2021 and I'm sad [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121756
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	I'd Stay If I Could

**Author's Note:**

> haha, getting back into the swing of things and I'm not super happy with it but I guess here's the first chapter oof

Falling in love with Kozume Kenma was easy.

They’d been best friends ever since they were kids. Tetsurou had had this crippling shyness that had worked well with Kenma’s own introvertedness. Kenma’d been the first person to accept him, weirdness and all.

Tetsurou’s father had been pretty absent into his early childhood, leaving him to the care of his mother while he worked to support them. His mother had never wanted a child, and it really showed in how she raised him for the first 7 years of his life. Tetsurou wasn’t an easy child, but he wasn’t as difficult as he could have been. He was quiet and stayed out of the way. However, he was picky with food and started speaking late. He didn’t like going to new places and preferred staying in his room or playing with his volleyball alone. His mother hadn’t been pleased with his tendency to stutter and flush with embarrassment. She resented when he got loud when telling her about volleyball and someone he saw play on TV.

He learned to stay out of her way as much as he could, even when sometimes eating felt like chewing glass.

When he was 7, his father learned that his mother had been cheating on him and leaving Tetsurou alone for weeks on end. His father had taken him to live with his paternal grandparents and promptly divorced Tetsurou’s mother. He hadn’t heard from her since.

Of course, since Tetsurou had moved, he had to switch schools and meet all new people. He’ dbeen so incredibly lucky to meet Kenma. Tetsurou highly doubted he would have survived elementary school without the quiet boy.

Eventually Tetsurou learned how to be a people person. He settled more into his skin and adopted a more playful and laid-back disposition. It worked well for him in volleyball, and Tetsurou was sure to keep it up. Luckily, Kenma was willing to be dragged along. He followed him all the way to high school.

Entering high school without Kenma had been a challenge. Tetsurou had been determined to keep up his new persona, but it was hard when the third years in the volleyball club seemed to have it out for him. In the long run, it did him good since it went a long way to turning him into the defensive demon and scheming captain that he would become known as. He did a lot of dig drills in his first year. If he wasn’t so tall and good at walls and shut outs, he could have played libero. As it was, Yaku was better built for the role.

Luckily, Kenma had only taken a little prompting to join the Nekoma volleyball team. He enjoyed the game in his own way, even if he would have preferred to spend all of his time on video games. It took some prodding from Tetsurou, but it was worth it. He made sure Kenma studied and ate at least twice a day. He made sure he was on time for classes and practices. He took care of Kenma, always doting on him and almost building an entire volleyball team around him.

And yet, whenever someone asked why Kenma stuck around even when he complained a whole bunch, Kenma would always answer with “Kuroo needs me”.

And Tetsurou couldn’t help but fall a little more in love with him.

No one else ever took it seriously when Kenma said this; it was so much more obvious when Tetsurou looked after Kenma. No one else really saw how heavily Tetsurou sometimes relied on Kenma.

Tetsurou was a top student at a strong school and he was a shoo-in for captaincy of a major sports club at a powerhouse school. Hell, Tetsurou had managed to become vice-captain in his second year. He was confident and suave, effortlessly provoking both friend and foe with smart barbs. He was charismatic and serious while still helping maintain levity when that was necessary.

But he was only 16.

Ever since his mother had left, he’d developed a habit of piling entirely too much onto his plate. Yeah, it was a bit self-destructive, but he’d yet to fail in any way that mattered, so he wasn’t going to change any time soon. Kenma’s own self-destructive tendencies gave him no room to talk, and really, it was enough that every so often, Kenma remembered t take care of himself so Tetsurou could have a break.

Somewhere into Tetsurou’s second year, he managed to confess to Kenma and Kenma was gracious enough to accept. They began dating, and Tetsurou couldn’t be happier Honestly, not much changed about their relationship, and a part of Tetsurou was grateful for that. He still struggled with change and new things even if he was better at hiding it.

He’d made more friends than just Kenma. Yaku and Kai had stood strong at his side in volleyball since first year, even if Yaku liked to give him shit. In second year, they went to a training camp through Fukurodani and Tetsurou gained a rather close relationship with Bokuto Koutarou and his setter, Akaashi Keiji. Kenma preferred to go off on his own after group practice and practice matches, so Tetsurou was able to tag along with the two Fukurodani players and practice more. It was nice to be around someone who wasn’t bothered by how enthusiastic Tetsurou could get about volleyball. The bright look in Bokuto’s eyes when he listened to Tetsurou talk about his dream to lower the net for everyone was beyond gratifying.

Even Akaashi didn’t give him crap for it like some of the Nekoma guys had! He dealt with Bokuto on a daily basis, so surely, Tetsurou was the easier one to deal with.

Due to all the time both Bokuto and Akaashi had spent with Tetsurou _outside_ of volleyball and school, they’d learned about his odd habits. Tetsurou wasn’t the same person that he was when he first met Kenma, but all the same, he had a lot of the same problems. He was unbelievably lucky to not be overly sensitive to cloth textures, although food textures could be a pain in the ass, nonetheless.

Bokuto and Akaashi were good to him; patient and quick to distract when necessary. Working in tandem with Kenma (and even Yaku and Kai) no one else really noticed Tetsurou’s odd moments. He didn’t like worrying underclassmen, and his friends were kind enough to help.

By the time he made captain in third year, everything was going well. He was on track to get into Todai for business – he’d been doing practice exams since he started high school and he wasn’t considered a genius for nothing – and Nekoma was doing well enough under his lead that he was satisfied. Then came Karasuno and Tetsurou was conflicted. There was nothing wrong with Karasuno making a comeback – in fact, there were numerous reasons why Tetsurou was ecstatic!

Coach Nekomata’s dream was to have the Battle of the Garbage Dump happen; an official match. With Coach Ukai retired and Coach Nekomata in his last years of coaching, he’d basically given up on having it happen. But these new first years had breathed new life into the flightless crows, and now it was a very real possibility that they might be able to do this.

The freak first years also seemed to breath new life into Kenma too. Tetsurou had never seen Kenma as into the game as when the little orange-haired Number 10 was on the court.

By all logic, Tetsurou should be overjoyed that Kenma was really excited to play Karasuno – that Kenma was able to really get into the game. But there was still a part of him that was disappointed that he couldn’t be that reason for Kenma. Still, he should be grateful that Kenma had even kept up with volleyball in the first place. Despite his best efforts, Kenma still hadn’t had the easiest of times during his first year. It would have been so easy for him to have quit.

So what if he couldn’t bring out the best in Kenma as a volleyball player? He was the reason Kenma even played a sport! Sometimes what someone needed to really get invested was a rival. Tetsurou knows the return of Karasuno lit a fire under his own ass. It would be hypocritical to get on Kenma’s case when he was the same.

Nekoma had never been the type of powerhouse that went out believing that they could win it all. Oh, they did not plan on losing, but they didn’t have the same drive and hunger that other schools did. They were experts in ground defense. They were still powerhouse attackers, but they were nothing special. They were pretty baseline as far as things went.

Tetsurou was fine with that. They would play until they lost and then they would play a little more. He never told his team to go out and win. _“Remember; we are blood. Never stop flowing. Keep moving. Keep bringing oxygen so that our ‘brain’ can operate at his best.”_ Nekoma was strong. Nekoma was reliable.

They could make it to Nationals. All Tetsurou had to do was make sure Karasuno made it too, and then they could have their fated rival match. All it took was a handshake for Tetsurou to see that Karasuno’s captain had the same goals as him.

So Tetsurou spread the word in Tokyo that Karasuno was no longer wingless, that they had a lot of potential. He made sure that they were invited to training camps and even took the blond middle blocker under his wing.

It was after that training camp that it happened for the first time.

He’d been a bit embarrassed by his insecurity. He was older than Kenma and had spent a good chunk of that life looking out for the setter. He shouldn’t bother him with trivial, foundless feelings. Kenma hadn’t changed how he behaved around Tetsurou at all, and really, the younger boy could use some more people he was social around. Tetsurou just struggled with the fact that he’d never seen Kenma click with anyone quite like he’d clicked with the orange-haired middle blocker. But Kenma put up with his social nature, so surely he could give Kenma this much?

And really, Karasuno’s number 10 was so genuine and so sweet that Tetsurou couldn’t even entertain the idea of disliking him, not that the little freak would notice.

However, Tetsurou had noticed a tight feeling in his chest as soon as Karasuno boarded their bus to head back to Miyagi, and at the time, he’d thought that it was the normal post-training camp blues. They’d said their goodbyes and Tetsurou had settled comfortably into his room to get a start on his homework.

Then he’d inexplicably entered a horrifying coughing fit. His lungs spasmed painfully as if his body was trying to choke him. He didn’t understand why it was happening.

And then clumps of bloody _something_ had fallen onto his desk just as the fit subsided. Tetsurou promptly had a panic attack resulting in more bloody lumps ending up on his desk when his lungs rejected his panic response and decided to punish him for it.

Now, Tetsurou was a smart guy, but his main sectors of knowledge were chemistry and whatever he needed to learn and memorize to succeed with business courses; none of which were biology. So he poked at the clumps with a pencil and turned to the time honoured tradition of diagnosing himself via Google.

There was a surprising amount of information available when one Googled “coughing up flower petals” – as ridiculous as _that_ sentence was.

Tetsurou wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with the concept, but when one coughed up blood, one tended to panic a little. After wading though the sludge that was an excessive amount of blog posts, he managed to track down some scientific journals.

Hanahaki was what the mysterious disease had come to be called in the medical community. It consisted of flowers taking root in the lungs and steadily growing until they filled the organ and caused the victim to suffocate to death. Symptoms mainly consisted of breathing difficulties and coughing up various parts of flowers. It started with petals and ramped up to full flowers in the later stages. Flower types varied depending on the person.

The disease was caused by unrequited love.

No one could pinpoint how this disease started, but mild cases appeared to be as common as the stomach flu. TI wasn’t nearly as fatal as it was when it was first discovered. Previously, the disease was a death sentence, but then it was discovered that having feelings returned cured the disease. Rejection caused the disease to recede, but not without permanent damage. Nonetheless, the flowers would be gone and the victim would no longer be in danger of slowly being suffocated by their feelings.

It was concluded that confessing would solve the problem one way or the other. As medicine developed further – and victims were so reluctant to confess that they continued to die – surgery and drugs were experimented with. The surgery was fairly invasive, but patients recovered with minimal complications. The downside was it seemed to render the patient incapable of feeling love ever again.

Drug regimens were able to combat the effects of hanahaki but was unable to completely eradicate it. It mitigated the symptoms and allowed the victim live a relatively normal life. Trial subjects reported it to be comparable to living with asthma. Some even reported this helping them let go of their feelings wherein which the roots of the flower shriveled up and died, leaving similar scarring to rejected victims.

The timelines of the degeneration seemed to vary as well. Some escalated quickly, while others lived for years unmedicated.

The journals didn’t specify what kind of love or even what caused certain people to develop it. It wasn’t hereditary or surely Tetsurou’s father would have known about his mother earlier. What Tetsurou was hung up on was the fact that it was caused by unrequited love.

Tetsurou could say that there were very few people that he genuinely loved. He cured for his grandparents, but certainly not enough to cause hanahaki. He’d grown to resent his mother once he got old enough to really understand what happened. He cared for Bokuto, but it had only been a few years of friendship. He claimed to love him, but Bokuto always seemed to return his platonic affection with the same vigor.

That left his father and Kenma.

His father seemed sincere if not a little distant. He made it to at least 1/3 of Tetsurou’s games and he supported him as much as he could. Tetsurou loved him, but he didn’t think that it was a love so great that it wasn’t reciprocated. But… Tetsurou hadn’t really understood that his mother didn’t love him when he was younger. Were his father’s actions completely perfunctory? It had to be, because if it wasn’t his father, then it had to be Kenma and Tetsurou didn’t want to think about that.

Tetsurou already felt guilty for being jealous of Kenma getting along with that Karasuno kid. He couldn’t imagine accusing Kenma of not loving him. They’d known each other forever! Kenma followed him to Nekoma and even kept up with volleyball!

But if it wasn’t Kenma, that meant that his father didn’t love him.

Maybe it was just a fluke! Just a one-time fit brought on by his insecurities playing him.

Tetsurou was a man of science. He couldn’t just jump to conclusions and accuse someone of not loving him. He didn’t even know for sure if this was even a serious enough case to warrant action one way or the other. He’d just… pay attention to what happened around him and see how the petals developed.

Hell, the petals weren’t even large enough for him to see what kind they were.

He just needed… time.


End file.
